Being BeBe

Being BeBe (2021) was directed by Emily Branham. It's a documentary about Nea Marshall Kudi, whose professional name is BeBe Zahara Benet.

BeBe is a brilliant drag queen performer. She was the first winner of RuPaul's Drag Race. Unfortunately, in this context, she's from Cameroon, where drag queens are sentenced to five years in prison for performing.

She now lives in Minneapolis, where she performs frequently. However, she is so talented and ambitious that she produces drag queen entertainments in other cities. Despite her talent, she still faces economic challenges every day. (It's great to win RuPaul's Drag Race, but it doesn't pay the bills.)

I enjoyed this documentary because you could learn about BeBe herself. She's a fascinating person, and a movie about her is worth seeing.

We saw Being BeBe virtually at ImageOut, Rochester's excellent LGBT Film Festival. The movie has a pretty good IMDb rating of 7.2. I thought it was better than that, and rated it 8.